WHO? Dr Chris Macdonald, a multi-award-winning scientist, serial inventor and Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.
WHAT? Using emerging technology for education and healthcare. He is best known for harnessing AI, VR and neuroscience to create a new treatment for speech anxiety.
WHAT ELSE? Founding the Better Protein Institute to help the world switch to optimal sources of dietary protein.
WHY? “My mission is to do everything in my power to make people’s lives better and the planet a better place for us all to live. Whatever it takes.”
Where does your entrepreneurial spirit come from? Did you have people around you doing enterprising things when you were growing up? Not at all. I’m not a conventional ‘Cambridge person’. I didn’t know anyone who got into Oxbridge. I knew people who ‘got into’ prison.
I grew up in a single-parent, non-working household. I was a state-school-educated, ‘free-school-meals kid’. I remember when I was young, going to primary school in dirty clothes with my shoes falling apart and being called poor by both fellow students and even their parents.
Home life was tough for various reasons so I would try to stay outside and away from the house as much as possible.
I was significantly injured one summer, and it was harder to stay out. I remember thinking that I needed to turn it into a positive so I decided to bunker in my room and use the time to read every book I could get my hands on.
I ended up giving myself an accelerated education in multiple subjects. I also remember thinking, it would be more efficient if I learned how best to acquire and store information, so I also read various books on neuroscience and memory championships.
I was flying through books and retaining the information. It was definitely a turning point.
I became very passionate about various environmental and social injustices, and I explored ways I could be of service. As a teenager, I created a short documentary using equipment borrowed from my college and it ended up being screened at a local cinema.
I remember thinking how inefficient the various leaflets I had made previously were. By contrast, in the cinema, there was a packed room of people focused on the information. It was an early insight into the power of leveraging technology to achieve impact on a larger scale.
I was determined not to use the fact that I didn’t have certain resources as an excuse not to start. My philosophy was to start however I could, even with a ‘rubbish version’, and then build from there.
I had some difficult early years, but they made me resilient, independent, and committed to making a positive contribution. I didn’t want to just talk about problems. I wanted to build solutions.
Before coming to Cambridge, you were working in tech in London, and then in North America. What was that experience like? I was very eager to get stuck into full-time work and push myself in high stakes situations.
I targeted innovative companies who were attempting complicated world-firsts. I worked every day, and I continued to study hard; I read more than 1,000 books and took more than 100 online courses. I loved the ‘missions’. The ambitious deadlines. The all-nighters. The sleeping on a sofa in the office. The challenge of finding a way forward despite the odds.
I ended up becoming manager of a company in Vancouver. We were doing complex and varied work for a range of high-profile clients, including some pioneering visual effects for Hollywood films.
Working for a company that was genuinely ground-breaking was really exciting. It was a nimble team, able to secure and deliver on massive deals. What I learnt was that everyone needed to be really great at what they did: there was no room for inefficiencies or people being off their game. I loved it.
You were also pursuing your ambition to help people at the same time? I was in a deep personal and professional exploration phase. For example, for one project, on weekends, I would wake up, leave my apartment, and try to help the first person I saw who looked like they could do with some assistance. This resulted in all sorts of adventures.
One day, I left my apartment, and it was pouring with rain. Walking through an underpass, I came across a homeless gentleman with three trolleys of belongings. I asked if there was anything I could do to help.
He yelled at me. I asked him what his name was, and he swore at me. I bought him lunch, and he yelled at me again. This pattern continued for weeks.
One day, he let me sit quite near him without yelling. We were both eating the food I had bought in silence. Rain pouring down again either side of the underpass. We were both staring straight ahead. He didn’t like eye contact.
Finally, he revealed his name: Jimmy. He explained that he didn’t like to share his name as it was given to him by his family and they had been killed. He shared his heartbreaking story with me.
The next day, I said: “Jimmy, I would love to help you. Is there anything I can do?”
After long discussions, he eventually revealed that the thing he most wanted to do is to wash his clothes. However, there was a catch: he said he must come to my apartment to do it.
Unfortunately, my landlord had already banned me from bringing home homeless individuals. And Jimmy had three trolleys with him. Sneaking him in was not an option.
I asked him why he needed to come into my apartment with me. He eventually explained that he only had one set of clothes, and he was wearing them.
Once I understood the situation, I was able to help. I bought him some more clothes, and some credit for the laundrette. Now he had a sustainable solution. He seemed a different person, much more confident and approachable. He was standing tall and smiling.
Jimmy was just one of the people I worked with. Each mini adventure was unique. It was humbling to see that seemingly simple things like having lunch, washing your clothes, or even saying your name, could be challenging.
I learned a lot from helping people like Jimmy. However, it often felt like a drop in the ocean. I started to think about how I could scale my efforts to help more people.
“I learned a lot from helping people like Jimmy. However, it often felt like a drop in the ocean.
I started to think about how I could scale my efforts to help more people.”
Chris Macdonald TED talk, image
You also managed to fit in a PhD? While I was working, alongside other projects, I had been conducting and publishing self-funded primarily behavioural research in the evenings.
Ultimately, I wanted to get better at accelerating positive changes by better understanding the barriers and levers. This ended up evolving into a self-funded PhD, completed in the evenings and weekends.
How did you find your way to Cambridge? Although I was learning a lot working in tech and I loved the problem-solving, I wanted to come back to England and find a way to focus solely on projects that help people and planet.
You very quickly established a multi-award-winning lab? By the time I arrived at the College, I was already using ‘tech for good’. The President at the time, Professor Dame Madeleine Atkins, was a big supporter and helped me secure some funding which led to the creation of my lab. Since then, it has gone from strength to strength.
I am now very fortunate that the lab has lots of advocates within and beyond the broader University community.
How would you describe what you do? Currently there are two main areas: ‘tech for good’ and ‘better protein’. The innovation that has gained the most traction is my treatment for speech anxiety; it has appeared in hundreds of news stories and my recent TED Talk has gained millions of views on social media.
How do you choose which problems you want to solve? I target unmet needs, and I calibrate for impact at speed and at scale.
Speech anxiety, for example, is a problem for around 80% of UK university students. It affects academic attainment, career progression, physical and mental health. Ultimately, it limits people’s ability to speak up during difficult moments and their capacity to drive positive change.
The project started with me trying to help one of my nephews. He was really struggling with his education and was on the brink of dropping out. I was determined to help him.
While there were already some solutions out there, they were not accessible. If you are to pursue private treatment, then the financial cost is, to be frank, exclusionary. And in some areas the waiting lists for free treatment are over a year long. Such barriers help to explain the current situation: where most students suffer from some form of speech anxiety and yet very few access treatment. The principal student strategy is avoidance.
To address this, I created an online platform where tailored course material develops core skills and virtual reality training environments build confidence. I made it instantly and freely available to all. No more fees. No more waiting lists.
Although that was a solid start, the treatment wouldn’t truly be free if it relied on people having to buy expensive VR headsets, so I made sure it works on any device including laptops for instant access. I programmed the associated phone app in such a way that it displays in full virtual reality, using the phone’s inbuilt sensors to know where you are looking in 3D space.
In addition to increasing accessibility, I also explored ways to make the treatment more effective. I added the latest advancements from neuroscience, tools that help people slow their heart rate quicker, or quieten activity in the amygdala to help suppress the fear response. I created custom smart features too to provide feedback mechanisms, to analyse scripts, speech, and performances.
I also developed something I call ‘overexposure therapy’ where users can train in hyper extreme scenarios that they are unlikely to encounter within their lifetimes. For example, you can train in a stadium with 10,000 animated spectators. It creates the psychological equivalent of weightlifting, building additional confidence, adaptability and resilience.
The results have been amazing. In the first trial, I found that a single, half-hour session significantly reduces anxiety. In the most recent trial, I found a week-long programme was effective for 100% of students.
“For example, you can train in a stadium with 10,000 animated spectators.
It creates the psychological equivalent of weightlifting, building additional confidence, adaptability and resilience.”
Chris Macdonald TED talk, image
What about your nephew? He loves public speaking now. He stayed in college. In fact, he recently graduated from university. The platform has evolved a lot, and it is now being used in more than 100 countries and it is on track to deliver a million free treatments this year. What started as helping one person is becoming a system that can help millions.
Dietary protein is another area you are focusing on. What prompted your interest in that? As with speech anxiety, it’s the potential scale of the impact and the potential positive ripple effects that excite me.
Some of the most popular sources of protein are incredibly inefficient, especially with regard to land use. Many people are concerned when they see images of, for instance, deforestation in the Amazon. However, few people realise that the vast majority of that is due to inefficient protein production.
To the extent that, if we were to transition to more efficient sources of protein, we could free up an area of land the size of Brazil, the US and Canada combined. Few areas have such untapped potential for positive impact.
I learned a lot more about the subject when writing my last book, Operation Sustainable Human. However, it became apparent that there were many gaps in the research which led me to create the Better Protein Institute to address fundamental questions such as how much protein is required for optimal health outcomes, what are the best sources of protein currently available, how can we increase consumption of them and what future protein sources should we be investing in now?
It’s such a dynamic field. I’m making meaningful breakthroughs almost every month, which makes it incredibly exciting.
What’s next? My current funding expires next year. Therefore, the immediate goal is to secure more funding. With the right mission-aligned philanthropist, we can achieve transformational impact at speed and at scale.
Quick fire
Optimist or pessimist? Definitely an optimist, a proactive optimist. It’s no use just believing things will get better: you have to take action.
People or ideas? People. My ideas are centred around how best to help others.
On time or running late? Ahead of time. I’m a ‘front loader’.
The journey or the destination? The destination. First, I create a vision of a brighter future. Then, I commit to making that a reality. The destination pulls me forward.
Team player or lone wolf? The deep research phase, the coding, the building, the writing, that’s lone-wolf time.
But for scaling, I want a super-specialist, lean team. The ideal is being part of a small pack of mission aligned, high performing wolves.
Novelty or routine? Novelty. It’s vital to challenge norms. But if you are truly disruptive, people won’t understand what you are doing. You’ve got to be prepared to be laughed at and misunderstood if you want transformation over incrementalism.
Risk-taker or risk-averse? Calculated risks with a lot of micro testing up front to find out what isn’t working.
Lots of irons in the fire or all your eggs in one basket? A selection of high-impact irons ready for the fire.
Do you need to be lucky or make your own luck? I don’t ever assume I’m going to be lucky so I put a huge amount of work into everything I do. I set the stage for success and create my own luck as much as possible.
Work, work, work, or work-life balance? I admit to working all the time, but it doesn’t really feel like work. It is such a privilege to be able to make a difference.
Enterprising Minds has been developed with the help of Bruno Cotta, Fellow & Mentor-in-Residence, Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.
Published May 2026
All photography: Chris Macdonald
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
source: cam.ac.uk